Pioneer
DVD±RW DVR-107D -
Page 1

Pioneer
enters the 8x DVD recording market with the new
DVR-107D. Being the first 8x DVD burner offering this speed
for
DVD±R
and 4x for DVD±RW, the drive brings the anticipated "balance"
in the recording speeds of the +R/RW and the -R/RW formats. With NEC (ND-2500A)
and LiteOn (SOHW-812S) as its main competitors in the retail market, the benchmark
results of Pioneer DVR-107D would be interesting to most of you.

- Features

Pioneer's DVR-107D offers wider compatibility compared to previous Pioneer
DVD writers, supporting high speed writing with various media. DVD±R
writing at 8x and DVD±RW
at 4x. Moreover, Pioneer has developed a series of technologies
with
the aim towards the improvement of final recording performance.

Precision Recording Technology

Precision
Recording Technology utilizes an auto-adjustable writing technique to enable
recording under the best conditions for each disc characteristic at all times.
This technology, first introduced in the DVR-A06, enables the DVR-107D to
achieve
optimal initial writing performance and helps to minimize the normal deterioration
of re-recordable discs due to repeated writing. As a result, the quality for
repeatedly used DVD-RW discs is up to 10 times better than previous writers.

The drive
also uses an industry- first DRT-DM (Distributed Real Time Defect Management)
offering
a form of defect management that conforms to the DVD format without sacrificing
write performance. The result is compatible writing even on discs that
have been rewritten many times, without causing a degradation of disc quality.

Ultra DRA (Dynamic Resonance Absorber)

Imbalanced
discs can cause vibrations that affect performance during high speed recording
and playback. An
Ultra Dynamic Resonance Absorber reduces vibrations that can affect performance
during
high-speed recording and playback of some discs. With this feature, the high
precision servo system
remains stable during both high-speed recording and playback.

In the picture below you can see the Ultra DRA effect on the total vibrations
of the drive. The feature reduces the vibrations by 65% at 9200rpm rotation
speed.

The drive uses a 2MB buffer memory. The RAW DAO 96 writing (CD) is supported
while Mount Rainier is not.

The Pioneer DVR-107D uses the RPC II region control, allowing a user to change
the drive's region at most 5 times. For our tests, we set the region
code to 2 (Europe).

- Retail package

In
our labs we received a sample engineers version of the Pioneer drive, having
come without logos, as can be seen on the following pictures.

Pioneer Europe
will not be releasing a "retail" version of the DVR-107D, due to
the lack of 8X media at the time. As well, there is only a short period between
the DVR-A07
and the DVR-A07XL (Advance). This will be on-sale in Europe as a retail product
by
approximately Mid-March.

In the retail version
(picture above) available in Australia and US, however, the included software
is:

Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 Disc Creator allows you to burn
movies, slideshows, data and music to CD or DVD in an instant.

Ulead Video Studio 7SE allows first-time users to easily
create professional-looking video. Ulead Photo Explorer 8.0 provides an efficient
way to transfer, browse, modify and distribute digital media. Ulead My Scrapbook 2 offers everything the scrapbooker needs
to create scrapbook pages, clip art and titles on the computer. Ulead Burn.Now is easy to use disc recording software.
Users can take full advantage of their CD/DVD burner to create data and
audio discs plus copy discs. Ulead DVD Player offers high compatibility and plays
commercial DVDs and DVDs created by other Ulead products. NovaBACKUP 7.1 allows you to back up your computer to
just about any tape drive, hard disk, removable, CD-R/RW or DVD drive.

- The drive

As was previously mentioned there is no Pioneer logo on the drive's front
panel since we received a sample version. The drive's front panel
is colored light gray and despite being a sample version, has the CD-RW and
both the +RW and -RW logos. On the right is the eject button and next to it
two ventilation holes just like in previous Pioneer writers. The activity led
indicator is placed left of the ventilation holes and further left is the emergency
eject hole.

On the rear panel there are
the analogue audio output, the IDE connector
and the power input.

Removing the screws and opening the drive's cover voids the drive's warranty.
For reference reasons, we post the following pictures.

- Installation

The Pioneer drive was connected to our test PC and was identified
as "Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-107D" under
WinXP. All tests were done with firmware v1.05.

The following pages include the test results of the Pioneer drive in comparison
to two other dual DVD burners, the new Sony DRU-503A and the Plextor PX-708A